Editorial
Paid leave for striking teachers et al

We run three articles in this issue of our newspaper to which we would like to direct reader attention. The first of these is by regular columnist Sanjeewa Jayaweera who had a long career in the JKH group of companies and now sits on several quoted company boards who advocates severe pruning of our overseas missions. The second is by Franklyn Amarasinghe who long served and headed the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon and later held a senior position with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. He was commissioned by the government of Sri Lanka and ILO to make proposals for a dispute settlement process in the public sector. He had also served on many Wages Boards and was a onetime presidential adviser on human relations to the banking sector. Amarasinghe discusses the ongoing teachers strike and some other key issues and makes the point that the striking teachers are on full salary. He points out that it’s a cardinal principle of a strike, as confirmed by an ILO Committee of Experts, that strikers are not paid. This reality has been ignored in the existing confrontation and few people are aware of it. The third article under reference has been written by M.P. Dhanapala, a highly qualified scientists, with 50 years experience in rice research, both at the Batalagoda Rice Research Station he headed and overseas.
Sanjeewa Jayaweera’s father, the late Stanley Jayaweera, was a career diplomat at a time this country had a public service as different to what we are burdened with today as chalk and cheese. The writer who had accompanied his father to several of his overseas postings cogently argues that Sri Lanka, for a country of its size and resources, has way too many expensive overseas missions and it is high time that we closed many of them. Believe it or not, we currently have as many as 54 resident overseas missions worldwide. Compared to this, resource rich Singapore has just 36. Many of the countries where we have a presence are not represented here.
While there has been a long existent necessity for us to cut down in this regard, we have on the contrary been been opening new ones including one in the Seychelles! There is no need to labor the point that exorbitant and wasteful expenditure in this regard, as in almost everything we do, has everything to do with expediency and nothing to do with prudent and tight management desperately desired in our current predicament. The number of political and other ‘catchers’ posted overseas over the years for reasons other than necessity is too well known to bear repetition. There is no escaping the reality that our overseas missions and their representation has for too long been a massive pork barrel and the sooner we begin correcting this situation, the better for the country and its people. This years budget estimates published a figure of Rs. 11 billion (USD 58 million) expenditure to sustain this extravagance. That was at Rs. 190 to the U.S. dollar. But with the exchange rate well ahead of Rs. 200 to the dollar, that figure will zoom higher.
People are today being made to tighten their belts to an unbearable extent. Daily wage earners are in a terrible predicament not knowing where the next meal is coming from. But splurges in government expenditure continue unabated and the political class remain pampered. It was recently revealed that more monitoring MPs are to be appointed. One such worthy of the past was convicted of murder, released on a presidential pardon and appointed to a cushy state sector jobs. Making token contributions of a month’s pay to the exchequer, while living in government housing, riding official vehicles and enjoying sumptuous subsidized meals does not count for much in this context. Another of our columnists today has commented that the political class, regardless of whether its members are in government or opposition, is universally hated. Some of our best and brightest have left the country and others are looking for a way out.
Citing chapter and verse, the writer of the third article titled “Are we making rational decisions in the rice sector?” answers his own question with a resounding ‘No.’ Pointing out that the current status of rice production in the country was achieved through what he has called “mutual development of related technologies” for more than a century, he says: “It is not a matter to be ruled-out by the so-called expert advisors with one stroke of a pen; as a result of transition to nontoxic organic rice cultivation, the loss incurred in national rice production will be colossal. This is not the time to learn organic rice cultivation with text book experience of experts with no field experimental evidence, he says. He warns that given the covid pandemic and other natural calamities like drought and floods will adversely affect global rice production and further threaten our national food security.
Reducing our overseas diplomatic missions is not the only way of reducing government expenditure. Everybody knows that government money is spent by the political and bureaucratic class in a fashion quite different to how they spend money coming out of their own pockets. At least a halt has been called to further recruitment to an already bloated public sector. There are countless more ways to effect savings in public expenditure and all these must be pursued with the necessary political will. Junketing at public expense is not a way of achieving these objectives. How big a retinue accompanied the PM and foreign minister to Bologna? We are sure that many world leaders will be there for the G20 Interfaith meeting, where PM Rajapaksa will be physically present, virtually. If anybody thought being in Italy will mean an audience with the Pope, that has proved grievously wrong. Yet the taxpayer here will have to cough out yet another pretty penny on this account.
Editorial
Best antidote to exploitation

Tuesday 6th June, 2023
Most people are labouring under the misconception that every prospect pleases in this country and only politicians are vile. Hence the unprecedented rise of anti-politics during the past several years and the demand that all 225 MPs go home. It is popularly thought that all we need to do is to cleanse politics, and, hey presto, the country will be a better place. The focus of last year’s Aragalaya, which sprang as a people’s response to unbearable economic hardships, corruption, etc., and was later hijacked by some ultra-radical elements with anarchical agendas to compass their sinister ends, was also on ridding the country of corrupt, failed politicians. The battle was lost and won; the popular uprising led to the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, but the Rajapaksa family has retained its hold on power by other means. In a way, it has been a case of swings and roundabouts for the general public, who expected a ‘system change’. But the question is whether their lot would have improved significantly even if they had been able to see the back of every corrupt, failed politician. There are many others who are as selfish as politicians and exploiting the public ruthlessly.
The Sri Lankan rupee has thankfully rallied against the major foreign currencies, especially the US dollar, over the past several weeks, and import costs have dropped significantly. The prices of essential food items and fuel including cooking gas have decreased, but the benefits thereof have not been passed on to the public; bakers and eatery owners fleece consumers by keeping the prices of their products extremely high. Private bus operators have benefited tremendously from diesel price decreases, but refuse to bring down their fares. They trot out lame excuses. The same goes for the unscrupulous taxi operators, who have refused to reduce their fares despite decreases in petrol prices and an increase in the fuel quota. The less said about the private hospital Mafia, the better; they exploit the sick with impunity. It has been a double whammy for the public; the state-run hospitals are experiencing various shortages and cannot cope with the demand for free healthcare, and the private sector health institutions fleece them.
Everybody is preoccupied with economic and political reforms these days. The IMF has rammed a slew of economic reforms down Sri Lanka’s throat, and they include the restructuring of some key public sector institutions. One can only hope that this bitter medicine will prove efficacious, and there will not be any social upheavals, which usually result from the IMF bailout conditions. The government has doubled down on its efforts to raise tax revenue and curtail its expenditure. Besides, some law and political reforms are on the drawing board, and much is being talked about the need to usher in a new political culture and bring about a system change. But it is doubtful whether these economic, political and law reforms will yield the desired results unless they are coupled with a robust social reform movement, which alone will help engineer an attitudinal change in people, empower them, inculcate a work ethic, and mobilise them to fight for their rights and work towards common good.
Traders, private bus operators, eatery owners, and others are having a field day at the expense of the public because people are not organised. The most effective antidote to exploitative business practices is for the public to boycott products and services that are unreasonably priced and are of poor quality. In this day and age, the public can be mobilised via social media easily. This is a task for opinion leaders and the various civil society organisations, especially those who claim to be fighting for the rights of the hapless consumers.
Editorial
A question of legitimacy

Monday 5th June, 2023
President Ranil Wickremesinghe, speaking at the National Law Conference, in Nuwara Eliya, on Saturday, urged the political parties represented in Parliament to join forces and help rebuild the economy. One cannot but agree that all political parties are duty bound to sink their differences and unite, for the sake of the country, to put the economy back on an even keel, for all of them have contributed to the process of ruining it albeit to varying degrees. The President also said that political parties should do so instead of calling for elections. There’s the rub! Does this mean that elections will not be held until the economy is turned around? How long will the government take to accomplish that task? What guarantee is there that it will succeed in doing so? What if it fails to straighten up the economy in the foreseeable future? Will the country be without elections indefinitely in such an eventuality? Efforts to revive the economy, we believe, must not be at the expense of the people’s franchise.
President Wickremesinghe argued that none of the parties with parliamentary representation enjoyed the support of 50% of voters. Opinion may be divided on whether his claim holds true for all political parties; those who endorse or challenge this argument will do so without empirical evidence. The best way its validity can be tested is for the government to hold the much-delayed local council elections, which will not lead to a change of government but enable the people to exercise their franchise, express their will, and, more importantly, help defuse the build-up of anger in the polity.
The SLPP has lost popular support though it polled more than 50% of the total number of valid votes at the presidential election in 2019 and the parliamentary polls in 2020; President Gotabaya Rajapaksa quit and Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped down as the Prime Minister due to public protests. They would not have done so if they had been confident that the people who had voted for them overwhelmingly were still with them. The UNP polled only about 2% of the votes countrywide at the 2020 general election and has only one MP. Thus, the SLPP-UNP administration lacks legitimacy to govern the country, and that is why an early general election has to be held so that the people can elect a new parliament; ideally, it ought to stop manipulating numbers in the current Parliament to retain its hold on power and seek a fresh mandate from the people by holding a snap general election, or at least face local government/Provincial Council elections without further delay.
Public resentment is palpable, and the government has become dependent on the police and the military for its survival, and keeps postponing elections. Political stability, which is a prerequisite for economic recovery, will be at risk as long as the people remain resentful of a failed government, which clings on to power in spite of having bankrupted the country. What the current regime is doing is tantamount to a rapist retaining the custody of his victim! It is only natural that the people have lost faith in the government.
President Wickremesinghe also said at Saturday’s National Law Conference that the majority of people had lost faith in elections, and politics, and whether it was the parliament, the judiciary, the media, trade unions or professionals, the people lacked trust in the entire system. There is a general consensus on this assertion.
The abuse of the National List (NL) mechanism by political parties to bring in defeated candidates and persons of their choice as appointed MPs is one of the main causes of the erosion of public faith in elections. The NL is a constitutional wormhole, as it were, which has to be sealed. Thankfully, all is not lost if relatively high voter turnouts at elections are any indication. Anti-politics, which means people’s hostility towards established political systems, parties, institutions or practices, is manifestly on the rise, and this situation is attributable, among other things, to the presence of many undesirable persons among politicians and people’s representatives, rampant corruption, the abuse of power and public funds, and the prevailing culture of impunity.
Most of the factors that gave rise to last year’s socio-political upheavals are still there; they have the potential to trigger another popular uprising of tsunamic proportions. Hence the need for the government to mend its ways and tread cautiously without suppressing democracy and provoking the public.
Editorial
Tea snapshot

The publication of Merril. J. Fernando’s autobiography last month is a useful peg to hang a discussion on the Ceylon tea industry – we advisedly call it Ceylon tea rather than Sri Lanka tea – as the former is the name by which this unique product is known globally. Merril Fernando, of course, needs no introduction. He is very well known in this country as the creator of the Dilmah brand he coined from the names of his two sons, Dilhan and Malik, which he took to the world outside making it the best known nationally owned tea brand in Sri Lanka. As we said in a review of the book last Sunday, MJF is not the country’s biggest tea exporter but his is the best known nationally-owned brand of Ceylon tea in the tea drinking world.
During the British colonial years and the early post-Independence period, tea was our major export and foreign exchange earner. But decades ago garments overtook tea and also, remittances from blue collar workers striking out overseas to support their families back home became a reckonable factor in the country’s foreign exchange budget. Net earnings from tea, obviously, was far higher than what garments, that had by far become the country’s largest manufacturing industry fairly quickly, brought in. That was because the imported input into tea was a fraction of what the clothing factories had to import to manufacture their product. This included not only fabrics but much more. The labour was the major value adding factor in the domestic garment industry.
The major imported input into the tea industry is fertilizer. Like garments, tea growing too is a labour intensive industry. Onetime Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel who presented 10 national budget for the J.R. Jayewardene regime from 1977 to 1988 once famously said that Sri Lanka’s economy sits on a tripod of women workers – those slaving on the tea fields, working in the garment factories and venturing out as domestic servants largely to the Middle East. Never were truer words spoken. The British brought in indentured Tamil labour from India to work on their tea estates under harsh conditions because the upcountry peasantry was reluctant for various reasons to work on the plantations. These were created at tremendous environmental cost on land sold for a pittance under the infamous Waste Lands Ordinance of 1840.
This stipulated that “all forest, waste, unoccupied or uncultivated land was to be presumed to be the property of the Crown until the contrary is proved.” This resulted in the denuding of the country’s mountain slopes clothed with montane rain forests providing the sponge-like catchments for the rivers flowing through the valleys. The price paid was irreparable ecological damage to first plant coffee and then tea. The upcountry peasantry lost their common grazing land and much more to this despoliation that brought fame and fortune to British plantation owning companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange. Ceylon tea soon earned the reputation of being the world’s best and Merril. J. Fernando in his memorable over six decade long journey through the industry retains at age 92 a passion for the product that was the foundation of his success.
Apart from very readable accounts of his upbringing and early years covered in the book, Fernando has dwelt on the exploitation of Ceylon tea by the British whose chief focus was the bottom line. He writes that during the period of his training as a tea-taster in the UK he was greatly distressed “by the ruthless exploitation of our tea industry and its workers that took place in London.” He had developed a great respect for the British as a result of his friendship with many Brits resident her e as well as his employers who controlled much of the tea export trade. But all that was shaken when he realized what was being done in London to Ceylon tea by the British who dominated the global tea trade in Mincing Lane, “the world’s undisputed tea center controlling and manipulating the distribution and marketing of tea from grower countries.” He says that resulted in producers, especially those in Ceylon, being held to ransom adding that we were then more vulnerable to market manipulation than any other grower as about 90% of national production was being exported, a large proportion going to the UK.
A major service rendered to Ceylon tea by Merril Fernando was his resistance to efforts to make Sri Lanka a so-called ‘tea hub’ by importing cheap teas and blending them with Ceylon tea. This would have been a profitable business but at the cost of both the unique character and reputation of Ceylon tea. In the middle seventies, as result of the JVPs 1971 adventure attributed by the then rulers to land hunger, the land reform laws compelled the sale 150,000 acres of British-owned sterling estates at a price of Rs. 1,125 an acre (pounds 42 and 50 pence). It was agreed that the compensation would be “prompt, effective (meaning may be remitted) and adequate.” Payment was concluded over four years. Rather than alleviate land hunger, the plantations were vested in two monolithic state corporation, the Sri Lanka State Plantations Corporation and the Janatha Estates Development Board.
Despite the presence of 23 Regional Plantation Companies managing state-owned plantations leased to them in 14 regions, 70% of Sri Lanka’s tea is produced by nearly half a million smallholders mostly in the low country. Today the industry is hard-pressed for labour with the tea workers lot way below minimum norms. But the industry remains a vital segment of the Sri Lankan economy.
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